Apple TV just got a big boost for better gaming

Nvidia Shield can’t be the only game-ready player on the market

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The revamped Apple TV hasn’t had the strongest start of any streaming video box. When it came out, many critics (myself included) panned it for delivering too little, too late – especially in the gaming department.

But a recent change to Apple TV’s app size limitation could change that.

Today Apple announced that it would up the maximum allotted size for apps on the Apple TV from 200MB to 4GB. What this means is that developers now 20 times the space they had before to include more graphical elements, which will be especially useful for game designers.

The reason Apple launched with such a low data ceiling in the beginning was to prevent people from filling up their on-board storage too quickly. Remember, Apple TV only comes in two sizes – 32GB and 64GB – and there’s no way to expand the memory via USB.

The other interesting inference we can make based on the change is that Apple might be contemplating launching new Apple TVs with larger hard drives. If that were something Apple has up its sleeve, however, we likely wouldn’t see it until June or August.

While Apple isn’t known to release specs on its internal CPUs and GPUs, we know that the processor that’s in there is actually quite powerful. It might not be able to hold a candle to the all-new Nvidia Shield which is capable of 4KHDR video playback and game-streaming from a PC, but Apple could very easily close that gap within the next year if it made it a priority.